Aruba, July 15, 2013 - EPM, the state water utility operating in Colombia's Medellín, plans to have the brand-new Bello wastewater treatment plant up and running by September 2015, EPM's head of wastewater treatment projects Carlos Enrique Muñoz told BNamericas.

At that point, "wastewater treatment coverage in the Medellín river basin will reach 95%," Muñoz said. A consortium comprised of Spanish firm Acciona Agua and South Korean Hyundai kicked off the project in September 2012 and plans to wrap it up in three years.

LEAP FORWARD

Currently, only 25% of the city's blackwaters receive treatment in the 1.3m3/s San Fernando plant, the remainder being dumped in the Medellín river with no further treatment.

The Bello plant will be able to treat 70% of the wastewaters proceeding from Medellín and Bello thanks to a capacity of 5m3/s, expandable to 6.5m3/s, which places it among the region's largest projects of its kind. It will be fed through a major sewage collector, the 7.7km, 120bn-peso (US$62.2mn) Interceptor Norte, also under construction and slated to be ready by mid-2014, Muñoz added. The whole system is being backed by the IDB through a US$450mn financing program.

In the long-term, EPM plans to reach universal wastewater treatment coverage by building two additional facilities in the municipalities of Giradota and Barbosa.